Whit Johnson’s handmade bike company, Meriwether Cycles, has been featured here at The Radavist periodically over the years. Recently, John spent a day at Whit’s small garage shop in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains of California and got out on a sunset pedal with him. Read on for a look inside and out of Meriwether Cycles, in addition to a preview of Whit’s new adventure gravel bike, the Ponderosa…
From Racing to GIS to Framebuilding
Whit Johnson first got into cycling in 1984 as he rode a Schwinn High Sierra mountain bike on Mount Tam. Forever hooked on bikes and inspired by the outdoors, he was drawn to the connections humans form with their surroundings. Soon, he began racing, and then in 1995, he was racing for Moots.
That year, when he picked up his racing frame, he had the opportunity to meet Kent Eriksen, the founder and builder of Moots. Back then, he was building out of the back of a shop called Sore Saddle Cyclery in Steamboat Springs. Seeing the shop, the tooling, fixtures, and frame-building process planted a seed that would take another decade to gestate.
In 2001, he graduated with a master’s degree in Ecology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He moved to Nederland to take a job at the city’s Open Space GIS department. While there, he worked in trail planning but ended up getting burned out managing the expectations of the various user groups. He also found the politics of the warring factions to be emotionally and physically draining.
In 2007, looking for respite from the politics of his day job, he bought a custom Hunter Cycles with a funky geometry, requesting a slacker head angle than was standard or normal at the time, solely to test out his ideas on bicycle geometry. Whit cites this as the bike that inspired him, noting it was his vehicle to “tour and get lost in the woods on.” He rode it everywhere and eventually took it from Grand Junction, Colorado, to Durango for the 2009 Single-Speed World Championships.
Some bikes leave a lasting impression, and that custom Hunter Cycles finally spurred Whit to pursue framebuilding.
In 2010, he took a “framebuilding class” in Denver with Chris Kopp. The class was intimate in a one-on-one environment. He was so green at the time that the whole process was completely new to him, and working with a legend like Kopp, who was a “master welder” at Yeti Cycles when they were based in Golden, Colorado, Whit realized how hard TIG welding was.
Never one to be afraid of a challenge, he dove right in taking Chris’ advice of buying a welder, a small mill/drill, and began to put in a lot of practice welding tubing, spending the rest of that year practicing welding every night after work. By April 2011, Whit had built his first frame on his own.
He moved to California in 2012 and began to build bikes full-time under the name Meriwether Cycles.
You Don’t Pick Your Own Nickname
Meriwether was a nickname given to Whit by a friend that was reading the journals of Lewis and Clark. Meriwether Lewis was the primary route finder and naturalist of the expedition, documenting the new species the group encountered for western science.
This nickname was bestowed on Whit because he made maps of the local trails (before GPS and internet mapping were a thing), and many of his typical rides would end up getting him and his riding companions lost. Wayfinding aside, Whit’s degree in ecology and love for being in the backcountry prompted the nickname to stick. He loved the name Meriwether for a bike brand that would promote exploration and discovery.
Paul’s Meriwether we featured last month. We’ll use this as a stand-in for the discussion below.
A Benchmark Bike
Whit’s custom Hunter Cycles informed his approach to building. He did everything on that bike; it was a true “quiver killer.” He cites Rick Hunter’s work as being a major inspiration for his own craft. Framebuilding is a slow burn. It takes time to develop one’s skills and understanding of construction.
After building his first bike in 2011, he made twenty-five frames for himself and his friends to further hone his craft. Soon, he took on wild one-off projects for customers seeking unique expedition bikes. Like Mike Curiak, who, in 2015, requested a very large fat bike that would roll on prototype 26 x 5.5+” tires.
Mike requested the bike be built with the shortest chainstays possible. Paired with a slack head angle, among other geometry tweaks, Mike believed that short stays helped the bike float effortlessly atop soft snow by keeping body weight over the rear tire for better traction. It also kept the front wheel light so it wouldn’t dig in and throw the rider off-course.
His design to solve Mike’s request involved an elevated chainstay, allowing for a wider tire to fit in the rear triangle without worrying about the trifecta of clearance: chainstay, chainring, and crankarm interference. In doing so, the bike was able to be run with a narrower q-factor and a healthier chain line. Both of these matter for expedition bikes ridden in sub-freezing temperatures as drivetrain efficiency can suffer due to ice and snow.
Noting the amount of “custom” that goes into these bikes, Whit told me, “We also developed a 217 mm rear end with custom hubs made by Onyx. This allowed the needed tire clearance for the prototype tires, but also less chain wear and cross-up since most of the time you’re grinding in the lowest gears with this type of bike.”
Portage Handles and Touring Machines
Whit spent many years defining his modus operandi for Meriwether, and one customer in particular nudged his direction towards expedition-minded frame designs. In 2015, the same year as Mike’s funky fat bike, Whit built Nicholas Carman a hardtail mountain bike for touring.
When visiting the Adventure Cycling Association in Missoula, Nicholas saw a portage handle on a bike built by Sam Braxton. He thought it’d be cool to have a bike with one, so he requested one on his Meriwether. A portage handle is an additional tube welded between the seat and chainstays to aid in lifting the bike over fallen trees when the bike has a framebag. It makes a lot of sense, especially for a touring bike, so Whit began putting these on his bikes as signature details.
Read all about Nicholas’ hardtail on the Meriwether blog.
Whit’s popularity among adventure cyclists began to grow and in 2019 Abe Taylor pinged Whit to build him a mountain touring bike. Modeled after his beloved Salsa Woodsmoke, he brought Whit some ideas about how to go about making the ultimate touring machine.
As Whit put it, “That’s a big claim to be the ultimate of anything, but I think Abe has solid ground to stand on.”
Abe loved his Salsa Woodsmoke but it, like many others, cracked at the elevated chainstay and had to be retired. When he engaged with Whit, the premise was to make a more durable frame with some added accoutrements for rugged mountain touring. One of which was a double portage handle.
To make a portage handle, Whit bends a 14″ or so piece of steel or titanium tubing in a large arch. The center part of the arch will be the bike’s seatstay bridge, and the remaining parts will be its optional portage handles. Most customers request one for the drive-side, but Whit can add them to either side or, like in Nicholas’s case, both sides. Details such as the portage handle quickly become part of a brand’s taxonomy, and now a Meriwether almost feels naked without one.
Portage handle on the Ponderosa drop bar bike…
Years later, Abe returned with new requests for another Meriwether, and Whit obliged, building him the bike linked in his blog post below.
If you’d like to see more on Abe’s old and new bike, check it out on the Meriwether Cycles Blog.
Titanium Jenga
“I hope Esker or Corvus Cycles make a longtail fat bike so I don’t get so many requests for them,” Whit said (half) jokingly to me as he fiddled with placing the tertiary structural members within the rear triangle of a custom titanium touring fat bike. “It’s like playing Jenga with titanium tubes.”
Whit made it clear that he loves each of his customers equally and enjoys the challenge of these mid- and long-tail fat bikes, but he “makes hardly any money off them.” I watched as he meticulously placed the long tail structural components in place, all so he could mark their location for the necessary porting holes needed in titanium fabrication.
As we “tire talked” about bikes, coming straight off our intense MADE coverage, Whit began to wax poetic about his love for the craft. “I like my miters to be airtight. Watertight even,” he noted, continuing, “it just doesn’t make sense to spend all that time prepping titanium tubes, calculating bends, to fudge the miters.”
If you recall Paul Price’s Meriwether we looked at in our pre-MADE coverage, you’ll recall the intense problem solving required for building these fat chassis tourers.
“This customer will be hauling his kid on the rear rack of this bike, so I’m using these massive M8 bolts to attach it. It’s heavy-duty. The frame is 5.7 lbs, and the rack is 4.5 lbs.” He handed me the rack and then its accompanying frame. Looking at the frame (above), it still felt light for its visual heft. “Precious cargo…” I commented as we hung the frame back up in the shop rafters.
Mindfully peering over the beautifully laid beads of titanium and the countless bottle or bag bosses. “Man, that looks like a lot of work,” I commented, to which he replied, “Yeah, at least I’ve got a lot of room to weld in with the longtail…” noting the wide hub spacing offers more space than normal to weld all the bosses and structure.
Titanium requires clean miters and contaminant-free tubing. It has to be purged with Argon gas to avoid weld contamination, and mitered welds require two passes: a fusion pass, and a filler rod pass. All this to say, in tight areas like a mid-long tail fat bike, lots of time is spent welding each and every connection.
Whit’s singlespeed ‘cross bike, 2012
While Whit’s luxurious titanium mid and long tail fat bikes might not be for everyone, he notes that he loves making all sorts of bikes as he rolled out his Meriwether number fourteen, a singlespeed ‘cross bike he built in 2012. Bright orange, tall, with a steel fork, wishbone seat stays, and a geometry in tune with ‘cross bikes of the era, this bike (that’s currently for sale – holler at Whit) feels like the ancestor to Whit’s latest production endeavor, the Ponderosa.
John’s Ponderosa, size 60 cm
Ponderosa Adventure Gravel Bike
Tomorrow, we’ll dive deeper into the Ponderosa in my long-term review, but I’ll give you the gist today:
Earlier this year, I got an email from Whit asking for my shipping address. He had a frameset for me. Steel frame and fork, with a Shimano GRX kit. All I needed were cranks, seatpost, stem, bars, and contact points. “Well, what is it?” I asked. To which Whit replied, “Well, you expressed an interest in my OGATB last year (a bike Whit was selling on the Meriwether Instagram), so I decided to build a production run of them, and I’ve got one for you to try out.”
The first Ponderosa prototype I rode in the Town to Towers video…
Over the next several months, I rode the bike in Santa Fe (as seen in our Town to Towers video), the Mojave, and Northern California. Whit’s drawing for the bike came from my old Sklar ‘cross/gravel bike which he got from Daniel Yang of Neuhaus/Artefact – who also helped Whit design the chainstay yoke and rear flat mount brake dropout designs for the frame – so the original bike had a more aggressive saddle to bar drop than I’d typically want on an adventure gravel bike or light tourer such as this.
Through a series of phone calls and emails, I gave Whit some feedback and we landed on an appropriate geometry for a stock sized XL Ponderosa. Check back tomorrow for the full review!
Shown here is Whit’s first Ponderosa prototype, which is pretty close to how the final models will look. This bike evolved from what he called the “OGATB,” a model he first made in 2021. That’s short for Original Gangsta ATB, or Old Guy ATB.
Whit’s bike features a custom titanium Meriwether seat post and stem. Note the cut-out on the seat post, which creates a considerable amount of flex compared to a standard titanium post. This is just a prototype; Whit is still testing whether this is a feasible offering for clients.
The Ponderosa features a steel fork, adventure riding/touring accutremonts, clearance for a 2.3″ 29er tire, non-boost spacing for a road chainline, and a tall stack height to bring the tops of the bars level with the saddle. This isn’t meant to be a fully-loaded, heavy-duty tourer like the Tumbleweed Stargazer but rather a do-it-all drop-bar bike for adventure riding and lightweight touring. Mine even has a lightweight titanium rack!
Sunset Ride with You Bet! Bike Shop
After what felt like an afternoon of information overload – these visits are like a crash course in someone’s life story – Whit and I met up with Jay Barre from You Bet!, a bike shop in Nevada City that has built many Meriwethers over the years and is Whit’s local bike shop. Jay brought his personal Meriwether 140 mm steel hardtail out for the sunset ride.
We’ll check that out later this week, but one of the build spec features is a Meriwether Stem-Stash one-hitter that fits inside a 1 1/8″ steerer tube. Jay has one of the first versions, made out of titanium on a manual lathe in-house at Meriwether. For the production versions available now, Whit worked with Collin Huston, from Huston Precision and Apogee, in Tahoe to design and machine an anodized aluminum version that added a hidden compartment under the top cap for ground flower.
These clever little pipes would make for a perfect present for the casual or serious weed smoker in your life! HINT, HINT! ;-)
Product (steerer) plugs aside, Whit rode his titanium soft tail, which utilizes John Castellano’s innovative flex pivot design, popularized by the Ibis Bow-Ti and other bike models over the years. Whit calls his model the Luddite, and while we already featured it as a Readers Rides in 2023, I documented it in detail for a Beautiful Bicycles gallery next week!
Photographing these two bikes with their owners’ unique riding styles really showcased how Whit’s design intuition and experience delivers each and every customer’s dream machine. I think I speak for most readers of this website when I say, these bikes are indeed dream machines and I’m sure you’d love to throw a leg over one someday too.
We’re going to have a bunch of Meriwether content over the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more!
In the meantime, follow Meriwether Cycles on Instagram and geek out at the Meriwether Cycles Blog for all sorts of bike design nerdary.